Honestly, the only legendary I want badly are Maiev Shadowsong, which I'm probably going to craft golden because she's absolutely nutty and you can just throw her into any deck and she'll be great.
That being said, there are a couple of other cards I do want to get, although mainly for just hot garbage decks or because I find them funny. The first being Reliquary of Souls because its prime art is hysterical to me for whatever reason.
"Delete this"
As for other cards, Bulwark of Azzinoth so I can make turbo fog a reality in Hearthstone and try to crush some people's dreams by playing a deck whos literally only win condition is dead mans hand slowly fatiguing the opponent (no coldlights, thats cheating). I Suppose Evocation and Beastmaster Leoroxx are pretty cool as well.
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised about how good Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin was performing honestly. Enough to the point where I might put one of the current decks I'm building in paper on hiatus to go and make a Krenko commander deck because as much as I love playing him in brawl, some of the cards I went with are... questionable to say the least in the grand scheme of things.
Right, but Sac Pact was designed and balanced in a world where demons were used only by warlocks, and the few neutral demons that have seen play are not real threats. The introduction of the demon hunter class, along with the more temporary spike in demons available to other classes, completely changes the landscape for the card.
It is not specific cards being too strong and prevalent, as it was for Dr Boom and Giggling Inventor, but an entire tribe being much more common than Sac Pact was balanced for. We'll have to see how it pans out, but if people are forced to not run demons simply to avoid Sac Pact then that will be a failing of one of the major parts of the expansion, all because of outdated balance for a card.
That's true if DH becomes the go-to aggro class that some people have been heralding it as Sac Pact could be pretty useful. I'm still skeptical on all the imprisoned minions since they are so slow and I don't believe the payoff to be worth it, so that might be a reason why I don't see demons being as prevalent as everybody else feels they are going to be.
I agree though, we'll have to see how it pans out because at the end of the day, I feel like the only time Sac Pact is going to be played is when its off of zephrys.
The last time Sac Pact saw any form of major play was when Cubelock was in its prime, as well as being a majority of the metagame. Even when it is "0 mana kill an enemy's creature, gain 5 health", it still did not win the game every time it was cast. Now looking at a meta where every other deck runs maybe 2-4 demons in it, Sac pact still would not be incredibly strong unless the demons were deck-defining cards that would win the game if left alone. It'll be a fun "haha gotcha!" moment to sac pact an opponent's demon, I'd find it hard to justify running a card just to counter a couple of cards in half of the metagame.
Another reason why I think Sac Pact is fine is due to the nature of tech cards. The only times a tech card has been nerfed was when it still is playable even when it's not against the card you are trying to tech against. The two examples of this are with Big Game Hunter and Flare, which used to cost 3 and 1 mana respectively. BGH was essentially in every deck because 9/10 decks were also running Dr. Boom, but against that 1/10 matches, it was still a 3 mana 4/2 which was still playable. As for Flare, it was a 1 mana card that said "draw a card", which I'd argue would still be strong if printed today. If we look at the other times a tech card starts seeing major play and becomes a very omnipresent card, such as Blood Knight back when Giggling Inventor was 5 mana, it is less the tech card being too strong and more the card it is meant to counter being too strong. If Sac Pact is put into every deck to counter a specific card, chances are that specific card its meant to counter is too strong and not Sac Pact being too strong.
I'd agree that Paladin has felt like its been going through a midlife crisis for the past couple of years, the classic and basic set actually fit together fairly nicely. What has pushed Paladin to feel so weird is that they do not know what to add in every expansions, and instead of committing on something to make it work, like what they did with dragon priest originally, they just bounce from idea to idea, resulting in cards that just don't work well together.
Basically, if you want to fix paladin's identity you'd have to change the cards in an expansion, which is something I don't see happening.
There's the whole "If Possible" part, which I took as "Target enemies if there is a legal target". This means that spells like Polymorph or Rolling Fireball will have to target your own creatures if the opponent does not have a board state. I'll try to clear that up in the original post.
Here's a list of all the possible outcomes in standard, might update to include wild later. Also, I haven't added any new mage spells to this.
Edit: One last thing before going into the list. While the card does say it will prioritize targeting enemies over our minions, if a spell gets chosen and has no targets that the enemy controls, such as a creature for Polymorph, I assumed it would target a minion that you control. This might not be the case, maybe it just won't cast those spells if the enemy has no targets for the spell. That being said, I'm staying with this way as it makes the most sense to me.
Overall this card looks pretty decent. There are some really fun low roll shenanigans that can happen, but a lot of the time it is just going to either burn the opponents for a bit of damage, play some cards that aren't really going to impact the game that much and damage, possibly kill, the opponent's board. My only concern about this card is that it's painfully slow, though that fits in with the current highlander control mage they have been pushing for the last couple of sets.
This art reminds me of Stormhammer, where it looks like a shaman card, sounds like a shaman card, but then was a hunter card. Except in this case, it looks like a warrior card, sounds like a warrior card but ends up as a priest card.
Aside from me hating this card for almost everything it stands for, it looks pretty fun and definitely shouldn't be slept on. Given the new 2 drop that priest got in its classic set, there's a chance a tempo focused priest deck sees the light of day. All that's really missing, in my opinion, is something to fill in the boots of Northshire Cleric, less in that it draws a ton of cards and more just that a 1/3 stat line that you can play on one. Sure the 1 mana 2/2 is strong and all but just for the sake of consistency some sticky minion that isn't dead weight on its own would be needed to push this style of deck into relevancy.
The Emerald Spellstone unnerf feels even stranger when you notice that the main deck it would see play in was even hunter, which now cannot run this in the deck. Not to be a naysayer but a lot of these nerfs feel more like tossing people a bone than "lets shake up the wild meta". Call of the Wild still is not going to see play, Yogg has so many spells now that he is not strong whatsoever, Spiteful Summoner can be strong but at the same time Wild has a lot more ways of dealing with a single large minion, and even Raza probably is too slow to make a large impact on the meta.
That aside, these unnerfs have all been really fun so far to play with, although I would not say it is very competitive.
Power Infusion doesn't let you play your Arcane Tyrant for free.
Jokes aside, It is sad to see PW: Tentacles be strictly power crept but the card has never seen any form of play so it's fine to me for a basic card to power creep it a bit.
Most likely they are going to be rotated to wild via Hall of Fame. There are still some cards that are going to stay apart of the basic collection though.
As for Outcast,
Outcast, the new Demon Hunter Keyword gives the card a bonus if it is cast while being the right-most or left-most card in your hand.
Kul Tiran Chaplain looks like Kabal Talon Priest because it's basically the same thing for the most part. Similar effect just scaled down. As for Power Word Shield being down to 0 but on drawing a card, it can be better to cycle with now with a Gadgetstan auctioneer or easier to clear the board with Wild Pyromancer shenanigans. While overall I'd say it is worse, I don't think it's gutter tier like it might seem at the first glance.
This all sounds super interesting, but I can't help but wonder what is being sent to the hall of fame for priest and more importantly, the stat line of Kael'thas. He can lead to so many fun decks and I want to just start playing it, assuming his mana cost isn't awful.
This year definitely felt like a year where Blizzard just threw stuff at the wall and tried seeing what stuck and what didn't. First-time cards have rotated early, first-time buffs have happened since the release of the game, first-time trying to have an overarching story for the sets, first-time bringing back old mechanics in the exact same form, it's surprising how much stuff actually happened this year that has never happened before in the history of the game. While they definitely flew too close to the sun for some of these, such as the buffs to Extra Arms and Luna's Pocket Galaxy, as well as some cards being overly pushed, I think it went fairly well considering all the stuff they tried pushing. Anyway, time to talk about some of the points you brought up in your post.
The Underrepresentation of Good Classes
I think it's hard to argue that good classes got the same representation that the EVIL classes got at the beginning of the year, but I am not really sure how else Blizzard would be able to tie in the League of Explorers to Rise of Shadows story-wise. It wouldn't make much sense to have the League already be visiting Dalaran when the attack starts, nor does it make sense for them to respond quickly enough to be present in Dalaran to be featured on cards. Blizzard got stuck between choosing flavor or function, deciding to go with flavor to tie in the whole storyline. Could the story have been rewritten to be able to include the League? Probably, but then the expansion focuses more on setting the stage and instead of the "Rise of Shadows". The next expansion should have focused on giving the good guys the same representation that the EVIL classes got at first, which as you pointed out, didn't happen.
Zephrys the Great is one of the three mistakes I think Blizzard made in its expansion structure. Out of all the sets that borrowed the previous set's mechanics, the only one that did not have any throwback card was Mean Streets of Gadgetstan, which in my eyes will always be an LoE mechanic. This would have been a perfect time to bring back the tri-class cards, but instead of being tri-class, make it align with good/evil. There was never a timeline where Zephrys worked for the bad guys so it makes perfect sense to me for Zephrys to be locked. Maybe they thought Zephrys would be too strong to be restricted/too hard to build around to take advantage of? Who knows.
Descent of Dragons is where the two other mistakes come in, with these being Dragonqueen Alexstraza and Galakrond. Dr. Boom and Hagatha already proved that not having every class have a hero card would cause an imbalance in what classes can go late game. Ignoring the fact a lot of the Galakrond cards were pushed, giving 5 classes an extra (and playable) legendary just would make balancing harder. Dragonqueen is a mistake for the same reasons why I think Zephrys is a mistake, so I won't go much into that.
I'd say that the underrepresentation at the beginning was fine, it happens all the time in other card games, such as Magic the Gathering not always having support for certain color pairing in standard all the time, but they missed their chances at making the good classes interesting.
The Issues with the Meta
The main issues with the meta come down to Blizzard pushing for new cards too hard. Every expansion in Year of the Raven had someone making a joke about how all the cards were awful, coining names like Dustwood, Dustday, and I can't remember the one for Rastakahn's Rumble on the top of my head, but that one got clowned on hard. Having underpowered sets then means less hype and fewer people buying packs, so Blizzard pushed back with a year that has almost enough power creep to rival Year of the Mammoth, which introduced three sets that were all incredibly pushed. It's an awkward spot where Blizzard really shouldn't print better cards next year, and go back to the power level of Year of the Raven (which aside from Genn, Baku and Dr. Boom, was all well balanced) and stick with it for a year so standard becomes more of a lower power level.
Summary
This year had its highs and lows, but overall I'd say it was an improvement over past years. This year felt a lot more like it was a kicking off point for the future of the game. Sure they flew too close to the sun sometimes, but if they continue down this road of trying what works and what doesn't, it will be helpful for the long run of the game.
Paladin? Will have a "new identity" that impressed me a lot 8/10
It feels like paladin has been going through an identity crisis for a while now. DoD brought along Pure Paladin, there was that whole 1-health matters stuff from Ul'dum, as well as Reborn paladin, big paladin from RoS, as well as secret and dragon paladin, heal paladin from Rastakhan, Mech paladin from Boomsday, and I guess buff cards from Witchwood, not really sure if there was an overarching theme from that set. While getting new archetypes is a typical for new expansions, these archetypes just don't work together at all, nor have seen any support aside from Dragon Paladin seeing the support of having more dragons be printed.
Interested to see if this new identity will stick, but at the same time it'd be nice to have any current paladin archetype get support, especially since the 1-health matters cards lead to one of my favorite decks of all time, hand paladin.
I don't think I'd be able to understand having more than 18 deck slots. That feels too complex and I'm not sure I, or any other players for that matter, can adapt to such a mighty change.
As for the main topic, I fail to see how having BG split from HS would make HS a better game in any way. The whole "make sure there's a large enough fanbase before kicking off a standalone game" doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either simply because despite having a bunch of questionable actions the last couple of years (Diablo Immortal, Blitzchung incident, Warcraft 3 reformed), they can still release a new game and have a ton of people adopt it quickly.
I believe Blizzard is just going to add new ways to play the game. Not in the "Oh hey it's a new format like wild but it only goes back to Un'goro instead of all of the old sets" sense but more in the same way that MTG has branched out to make other formats possible. Formats like Pauper and Commander both see a ton of play and they wouldn't be hard to implement into Hearthstone and would provide a ton of new ways to play the game, as well as a ton of new ways to monetize the game to make the investors happy. Considering that Hearthstone has been a game for almost 6 years now and there are still only 5 game modes is surprising to me. Once again comparing this to MTG, there's a ton of formats that have formed just because WotC essentially lets the community make whatever abomination they want and if it sticks, they support it. If Blizzard makes a tool to create a 'custom game mode' similar to what they did with Overwatch, I could see it being the thing that "cements HS for the next decade". Maybe not for that long, but definitely for a year or 3.
Zul'jin was really fun after the KFT Deathknights rotated out, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared by the 'three-phase fight' hunters, which might be why I don't have many fond memories of Zul'jin.
Totally fair to be happy that most of these cards leave standard. As sad as I am to see probably my favorite card of all time leave standard, it's nice to have a fresh new coat of paint on the format and have to go back to essentially ground zero (if we ignore the Year of the Dragon cards) when it comes to what decks are possible. That and Zilliax makes me sick to my stomach as you just throw him in any deck and most likely he will have a positive win-rate in it so I'm happy to see Boomsday leave.
As a quick aside, I find it funny how different Boomsday looks now than it did when it first launched. The set used to be mocked for having only 'viable' card in the form of Giggling Inventor, yet now has a large chunk of its cards seeing some form of play, with one of them being one of the strongest cards ever printed. While obviously the buffs played a role in this, I still find the whole scenario interesting.
Glad you like the bio, although I should probably right more for it now that the article is live.
As for why there is no Leeroy, it just felt redundant a lot of the time. There is already a lot of face damage in just the invokes and so the only time Leeroy really did Leeroy things was when he was hit off of Galakrond's battlecry and then copied with Inner Rage and Bloodsworn Mercenary for a truckload of damage. I have been thinking about putting either him or a [Hearthstone Card (Korkron Elite) Not Found] (as a 1 of) In replacement of Battle Rage since two seems a bit excessive.
Honestly, the only legendary I want badly are Maiev Shadowsong, which I'm probably going to craft golden because she's absolutely nutty and you can just throw her into any deck and she'll be great.
That being said, there are a couple of other cards I do want to get, although mainly for just hot garbage decks or because I find them funny. The first being Reliquary of Souls because its prime art is hysterical to me for whatever reason.
"Delete this"
As for other cards, Bulwark of Azzinoth so I can make turbo fog a reality in Hearthstone and try to crush some people's dreams by playing a deck whos literally only win condition is dead mans hand slowly fatiguing the opponent (no coldlights, thats cheating). I Suppose Evocation and Beastmaster Leoroxx are pretty cool as well.
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised about how good Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin was performing honestly. Enough to the point where I might put one of the current decks I'm building in paper on hiatus to go and make a Krenko commander deck because as much as I love playing him in brawl, some of the cards I went with are... questionable to say the least in the grand scheme of things.
I didn't get a lot of the flavor text references this time around, but some of my favorite ones from this expansion.
Kayn Sunfury
"Armor and heals may slow my zeal, but fel and glaives excite me!"
Apexis Blast
"Lonely mages can still have a blast!"
Warmaul Challenger
"Old Gladiator rules: first one to die loses."
Apexis Smuggler
"S-secrets? I don't have any! Whoa, look, a spell!"
That's true if DH becomes the go-to aggro class that some people have been heralding it as Sac Pact could be pretty useful. I'm still skeptical on all the imprisoned minions since they are so slow and I don't believe the payoff to be worth it, so that might be a reason why I don't see demons being as prevalent as everybody else feels they are going to be.
I agree though, we'll have to see how it pans out because at the end of the day, I feel like the only time Sac Pact is going to be played is when its off of zephrys.
The last time Sac Pact saw any form of major play was when Cubelock was in its prime, as well as being a majority of the metagame. Even when it is "0 mana kill an enemy's creature, gain 5 health", it still did not win the game every time it was cast. Now looking at a meta where every other deck runs maybe 2-4 demons in it, Sac pact still would not be incredibly strong unless the demons were deck-defining cards that would win the game if left alone. It'll be a fun "haha gotcha!" moment to sac pact an opponent's demon, I'd find it hard to justify running a card just to counter a couple of cards in half of the metagame.
Another reason why I think Sac Pact is fine is due to the nature of tech cards. The only times a tech card has been nerfed was when it still is playable even when it's not against the card you are trying to tech against. The two examples of this are with Big Game Hunter and Flare, which used to cost 3 and 1 mana respectively. BGH was essentially in every deck because 9/10 decks were also running Dr. Boom, but against that 1/10 matches, it was still a 3 mana 4/2 which was still playable. As for Flare, it was a 1 mana card that said "draw a card", which I'd argue would still be strong if printed today. If we look at the other times a tech card starts seeing major play and becomes a very omnipresent card, such as Blood Knight back when Giggling Inventor was 5 mana, it is less the tech card being too strong and more the card it is meant to counter being too strong. If Sac Pact is put into every deck to counter a specific card, chances are that specific card its meant to counter is too strong and not Sac Pact being too strong.
I'd agree that Paladin has felt like its been going through a midlife crisis for the past couple of years, the classic and basic set actually fit together fairly nicely. What has pushed Paladin to feel so weird is that they do not know what to add in every expansions, and instead of committing on something to make it work, like what they did with dragon priest originally, they just bounce from idea to idea, resulting in cards that just don't work well together.
Basically, if you want to fix paladin's identity you'd have to change the cards in an expansion, which is something I don't see happening.
There's the whole "If Possible" part, which I took as "Target enemies if there is a legal target". This means that spells like Polymorph or Rolling Fireball will have to target your own creatures if the opponent does not have a board state. I'll try to clear that up in the original post.
Here's a list of all the possible outcomes in standard, might update to include wild later. Also, I haven't added any new mage spells to this.
Edit: One last thing before going into the list. While the card does say it will prioritize targeting enemies over our minions, if a spell gets chosen and has no targets that the enemy controls, such as a creature for Polymorph, I assumed it would target a minion that you control. This might not be the case, maybe it just won't cast those spells if the enemy has no targets for the spell. That being said, I'm staying with this way as it makes the most sense to me.
Good, 15/30 for a 50% chance.: Power of Creation, Flamestrike, Blizzard, Pyroblast, Fireball, Arcane Intellect, Counterspell, Flame Ward, Frost Nova, Ice Barrier, Mirror Entity, Spellbender, Vaporize, Frostbolt, Tome of Intellect.
Can kill your Own stuff/Super big low rolls (aka Conjurer's Calling), 6/30 for a 20% chance: Rolling Fireball, Cone of Cold, Conjurer's Calling, Polymorph, Icicle, Arcane Breath,
Low Impact, 7/30 for a 23% chance: Arcane Missiles, Learn Draconic, Magic Trick, Mirror Image, Ancient Mysteries,Arcane Explosion, Ray of Frost,
Bad, 1/30 for a 3% chance: Elemental Allies
Yogg Box, 1/30 for a 3% chance.: Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron
Overall this card looks pretty decent. There are some really fun low roll shenanigans that can happen, but a lot of the time it is just going to either burn the opponents for a bit of damage, play some cards that aren't really going to impact the game that much and damage, possibly kill, the opponent's board. My only concern about this card is that it's painfully slow, though that fits in with the current highlander control mage they have been pushing for the last couple of sets.
This art reminds me of Stormhammer, where it looks like a shaman card, sounds like a shaman card, but then was a hunter card. Except in this case, it looks like a warrior card, sounds like a warrior card but ends up as a priest card.
Aside from me hating this card for almost everything it stands for, it looks pretty fun and definitely shouldn't be slept on. Given the new 2 drop that priest got in its classic set, there's a chance a tempo focused priest deck sees the light of day. All that's really missing, in my opinion, is something to fill in the boots of Northshire Cleric, less in that it draws a ton of cards and more just that a 1/3 stat line that you can play on one. Sure the 1 mana 2/2 is strong and all but just for the sake of consistency some sticky minion that isn't dead weight on its own would be needed to push this style of deck into relevancy.
The Emerald Spellstone unnerf feels even stranger when you notice that the main deck it would see play in was even hunter, which now cannot run this in the deck. Not to be a naysayer but a lot of these nerfs feel more like tossing people a bone than "lets shake up the wild meta". Call of the Wild still is not going to see play, Yogg has so many spells now that he is not strong whatsoever, Spiteful Summoner can be strong but at the same time Wild has a lot more ways of dealing with a single large minion, and even Raza probably is too slow to make a large impact on the meta.
That aside, these unnerfs have all been really fun so far to play with, although I would not say it is very competitive.
Power Infusion doesn't let you play your Arcane Tyrant for free.
Jokes aside, It is sad to see PW: Tentacles be strictly power crept but the card has never seen any form of play so it's fine to me for a basic card to power creep it a bit.
Most likely they are going to be rotated to wild via Hall of Fame. There are still some cards that are going to stay apart of the basic collection though.
As for Outcast,
Kul Tiran Chaplain looks like Kabal Talon Priest because it's basically the same thing for the most part. Similar effect just scaled down. As for Power Word Shield being down to 0 but on drawing a card, it can be better to cycle with now with a Gadgetstan auctioneer or easier to clear the board with Wild Pyromancer shenanigans. While overall I'd say it is worse, I don't think it's gutter tier like it might seem at the first glance.
This all sounds super interesting, but I can't help but wonder what is being sent to the hall of fame for priest and more importantly, the stat line of Kael'thas. He can lead to so many fun decks and I want to just start playing it, assuming his mana cost isn't awful.
This year definitely felt like a year where Blizzard just threw stuff at the wall and tried seeing what stuck and what didn't. First-time cards have rotated early, first-time buffs have happened since the release of the game, first-time trying to have an overarching story for the sets, first-time bringing back old mechanics in the exact same form, it's surprising how much stuff actually happened this year that has never happened before in the history of the game. While they definitely flew too close to the sun for some of these, such as the buffs to Extra Arms and Luna's Pocket Galaxy, as well as some cards being overly pushed, I think it went fairly well considering all the stuff they tried pushing. Anyway, time to talk about some of the points you brought up in your post.
The Underrepresentation of Good Classes
I think it's hard to argue that good classes got the same representation that the EVIL classes got at the beginning of the year, but I am not really sure how else Blizzard would be able to tie in the League of Explorers to Rise of Shadows story-wise. It wouldn't make much sense to have the League already be visiting Dalaran when the attack starts, nor does it make sense for them to respond quickly enough to be present in Dalaran to be featured on cards. Blizzard got stuck between choosing flavor or function, deciding to go with flavor to tie in the whole storyline. Could the story have been rewritten to be able to include the League? Probably, but then the expansion focuses more on setting the stage and instead of the "Rise of Shadows". The next expansion should have focused on giving the good guys the same representation that the EVIL classes got at first, which as you pointed out, didn't happen.
Zephrys the Great is one of the three mistakes I think Blizzard made in its expansion structure. Out of all the sets that borrowed the previous set's mechanics, the only one that did not have any throwback card was Mean Streets of Gadgetstan, which in my eyes will always be an LoE mechanic. This would have been a perfect time to bring back the tri-class cards, but instead of being tri-class, make it align with good/evil. There was never a timeline where Zephrys worked for the bad guys so it makes perfect sense to me for Zephrys to be locked. Maybe they thought Zephrys would be too strong to be restricted/too hard to build around to take advantage of? Who knows.
Descent of Dragons is where the two other mistakes come in, with these being Dragonqueen Alexstraza and Galakrond. Dr. Boom and Hagatha already proved that not having every class have a hero card would cause an imbalance in what classes can go late game. Ignoring the fact a lot of the Galakrond cards were pushed, giving 5 classes an extra (and playable) legendary just would make balancing harder. Dragonqueen is a mistake for the same reasons why I think Zephrys is a mistake, so I won't go much into that.
I'd say that the underrepresentation at the beginning was fine, it happens all the time in other card games, such as Magic the Gathering not always having support for certain color pairing in standard all the time, but they missed their chances at making the good classes interesting.
The Issues with the Meta
The main issues with the meta come down to Blizzard pushing for new cards too hard. Every expansion in Year of the Raven had someone making a joke about how all the cards were awful, coining names like Dustwood, Dustday, and I can't remember the one for Rastakahn's Rumble on the top of my head, but that one got clowned on hard. Having underpowered sets then means less hype and fewer people buying packs, so Blizzard pushed back with a year that has almost enough power creep to rival Year of the Mammoth, which introduced three sets that were all incredibly pushed. It's an awkward spot where Blizzard really shouldn't print better cards next year, and go back to the power level of Year of the Raven (which aside from Genn, Baku and Dr. Boom, was all well balanced) and stick with it for a year so standard becomes more of a lower power level.
Summary
This year had its highs and lows, but overall I'd say it was an improvement over past years. This year felt a lot more like it was a kicking off point for the future of the game. Sure they flew too close to the sun sometimes, but if they continue down this road of trying what works and what doesn't, it will be helpful for the long run of the game.
It feels like paladin has been going through an identity crisis for a while now. DoD brought along Pure Paladin, there was that whole 1-health matters stuff from Ul'dum, as well as Reborn paladin, big paladin from RoS, as well as secret and dragon paladin, heal paladin from Rastakhan, Mech paladin from Boomsday, and I guess buff cards from Witchwood, not really sure if there was an overarching theme from that set. While getting new archetypes is a typical for new expansions, these archetypes just don't work together at all, nor have seen any support aside from Dragon Paladin seeing the support of having more dragons be printed.
Interested to see if this new identity will stick, but at the same time it'd be nice to have any current paladin archetype get support, especially since the 1-health matters cards lead to one of my favorite decks of all time, hand paladin.
I don't think I'd be able to understand having more than 18 deck slots. That feels too complex and I'm not sure I, or any other players for that matter, can adapt to such a mighty change.
As for the main topic, I fail to see how having BG split from HS would make HS a better game in any way. The whole "make sure there's a large enough fanbase before kicking off a standalone game" doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either simply because despite having a bunch of questionable actions the last couple of years (Diablo Immortal, Blitzchung incident, Warcraft 3 reformed), they can still release a new game and have a ton of people adopt it quickly.
I believe Blizzard is just going to add new ways to play the game. Not in the "Oh hey it's a new format like wild but it only goes back to Un'goro instead of all of the old sets" sense but more in the same way that MTG has branched out to make other formats possible. Formats like Pauper and Commander both see a ton of play and they wouldn't be hard to implement into Hearthstone and would provide a ton of new ways to play the game, as well as a ton of new ways to monetize the game to make the investors happy. Considering that Hearthstone has been a game for almost 6 years now and there are still only 5 game modes is surprising to me. Once again comparing this to MTG, there's a ton of formats that have formed just because WotC essentially lets the community make whatever abomination they want and if it sticks, they support it. If Blizzard makes a tool to create a 'custom game mode' similar to what they did with Overwatch, I could see it being the thing that "cements HS for the next decade". Maybe not for that long, but definitely for a year or 3.
Zul'jin was really fun after the KFT Deathknights rotated out, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared by the 'three-phase fight' hunters, which might be why I don't have many fond memories of Zul'jin.
Totally fair to be happy that most of these cards leave standard. As sad as I am to see probably my favorite card of all time leave standard, it's nice to have a fresh new coat of paint on the format and have to go back to essentially ground zero (if we ignore the Year of the Dragon cards) when it comes to what decks are possible. That and Zilliax makes me sick to my stomach as you just throw him in any deck and most likely he will have a positive win-rate in it so I'm happy to see Boomsday leave.
As a quick aside, I find it funny how different Boomsday looks now than it did when it first launched. The set used to be mocked for having only 'viable' card in the form of Giggling Inventor, yet now has a large chunk of its cards seeing some form of play, with one of them being one of the strongest cards ever printed. While obviously the buffs played a role in this, I still find the whole scenario interesting.
Glad you like the bio, although I should probably right more for it now that the article is live.
As for why there is no Leeroy, it just felt redundant a lot of the time. There is already a lot of face damage in just the invokes and so the only time Leeroy really did Leeroy things was when he was hit off of Galakrond's battlecry and then copied with Inner Rage and Bloodsworn Mercenary for a truckload of damage. I have been thinking about putting either him or a [Hearthstone Card (Korkron Elite) Not Found] (as a 1 of) In replacement of Battle Rage since two seems a bit excessive.